Hosteur Optimizes Its Infrastructure with Huawei OceanStor Storage
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Hosteur has been relying on Huawei solutions to support its development since 2017. "Before 2017, we were working with another storage provider," explained Florent Gentric, Hosteur's Chief Technology Officer (CTO). "But the solutions we were using were at the end of support and hadn't been renewed. So we tested several brands, including Huawei. When we met the team, we were immediately won over by their attentiveness and the quality of their support."
Hosteur team set about testing Huawei products and the price-performance ratio, deduplication rate, and data compression all proved convincing factors. Initially, the company chose to start with a smaller storage unit: an OceanStor Dorado Storage Area Network (SAN). The solution was then upgraded to even greater performance levels through the use of OceanStor Dorado all-flash. "We now have 16 devices," said Gentric, "mainly Dorado 5000."
For over a year now, Hosteur has been working to develop a new platform that can meet new the needs of customers in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly in the healthcare sector. This project has led the hosting provider to rely on object storage, initially based on OceanStor 100D, followed by an upgrade to OceanStor Pacific. The challenge is to provide distinct usage models for a complete Machine Learning (ML) platform that is ready to use, flexible, scalable, and affordable.
In this context, data plays a critical role, with four key areas to address: sustainability, scalability, performance, and cost. "Drawing on our expertise in object storage, we chose to place S3 tools at the heart of the model to meet these challenges" Gentric said. "Since the platform is deployable on site, customers have the option of using our hosted object services or replacing them with alternative solutions such as dedicated OceanStor or other S3-compatible solutions like MinIO, or even leveraging their preferred Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions."
Although the platform is still under development, Hosteur's CTO is convinced the he has made the correct choice: "Choosing S3 and using OceanStor 100D hardware have proved to be the right decisions for Hosteur. The data lake component is up and running, and Huawei has supported us every step of the way in building the platform."
In the future, Hosteur plans to exploit more native features such as Key Management Service (KMS) integration for encryption-at-rest management, and to use S3 metadata directly on objects for cataloging purposes. "Implementing this level of technology at this scale would have been a challenge without Huawei's support and assistance," Gentric noted.
"Their expertise and commitment to quality have been invaluable in ensuring the success of our project and providing help whenever we encounter problems."
Hosteur chose Huawei for a number of reasons. "First and foremost, we wanted our customers to have an affordable platform. In this type of market, data is massive and expensive. Using Huawei technologies reduces costs considerably," Gentric said.
Comparing Huawei solutions with competing storage systems, Hosteur quickly realized that the main focus of efforts should be the switch from the mechanical disks of the legacy SAN platform to flash disks. Such a switch transformed performance levels immediately.
But the company was also working against time constraints. "We're experiencing uninterrupted growth in storage rather than computing," said Gentric. "And storage is complex to acquire and costly and time-consuming to manufacture. Huawei's ability to supply hardware quickly was a key factor in the development of this project."
Beyond the mere hardware, Hosteur was also impressed by Huawei's attention to detail and its willingness to provide advice, feedback, and fresh ideas, with the aim of building a tailor-made solution rather than taking a cookie-cutter approach.
Huawei OceanStor Dorado storage offers a unique combination of performance, reliability, and flexibility, meeting the needs of Hosteur and its customers. This allows Hosteur to guarantee fast, reliable access to critical data, while offering optimum scalability to meet ever-growing storage requirements. The performance of the OceanStor Dorado solution, powered by flash technology, reduces latency and improves application responsiveness, delivering an enhanced user experience.
In addition, the intelligent caching and data deduplication capabilities of the OceanStor Dorado range mean that Hosteur can optimize the use of storage space. These features ensure efficient use of resources, reducing operational costs while maintaining high performance. Thanks to this cost optimization, Hosteur can offer competitive services to its customers, while maintaining sustainable profitability.
OceanStor Dorado also offers centralized management of storage resources, simplifying management operations and reducing potential errors. In addition, advanced features such as synchronous and asynchronous replication guarantee data availability and support Disaster Recovery (DR). This enables Hosteur to offer its customers peace of mind by ensuring data protection and business continuity even in the event of major incidents.
The high level of security offered by Huawei's storage technologies was also a decisive factor in Hosteur's choice, particularly to meet the needs of its customers in the healthcare sector. It can rely on the many advanced security features integrated into Huawei's product range, including robust encryption and authentication mechanisms, to prevent unauthorized access and ensure the confidentiality of information.
This cooperation has also played a decisive role, allowing Hosteur to obtain numerous certifications, including Hébergeur de Données de Santé (HDS), or Health Data Hosting, in 2019, a certification from the French government health agency — the Agence du Numérique en Santé (ANS) — that attests to the security of personal health data.